Silicon Dreams special Critical of Senator Conroy Edition

His plans are foolish and will damage this country economically and democratically, lessening our freedoms, raising our fear levels and generally turning us all into paranoid twits.

The worst part of all, the completely unforgivable part, is that the mandatory filtering will not actually work to curb child pornography distribution, which, as many studies have pointed out (and been completely ignored) are traditionally traded in a peer-to-peer fashion, over chat and filesharing networks, rather than the small fraction that are websites.

And now he’s monitoring blogs that disagree with him? I suspect the Minister for Communications is planning on being the Minister for Truth – doesn’t he realise he’s 25 years too late?

I could, and have, go on about this issue at length and in detail, but there are others doing it just as succinctly as I could ever hope to. Go see them, and resist these attacks on your freedom.

Also remember that some things that Stephen (The Nanny) Conroy dislikes, disapproves of, and would consider “unwanted material” are not “illegal”. There is a difference. Fetishes are not illegal, just distasteful to fundamentalist Christians. Distasteful to fundamentalist Christians is, in my view, more of a reason to spread something around then filter it out. Most of the people enjoying these things are hurting no-one – unless they want to be hurt – whilst these religious right hurt us all when they try and shape our country in their own image.